Turkey: Kyrgyz Nomads Struggle to Make Peace with Settled Existence

Kyrgyz men in Ulupamir still play the game of ulak-tartysh, or goat-grabbing, but mostly on festivals or for TV news crews.

The hills of eastern Anatolia are better suited for sheep herding than for keeping yaks. Some 1,100 Kyrgyz found this out the hard way when they migrated to Turkey 30 years ago from Afghanistan's remote Wakhan Corridor.

They had fled the turmoil of Afghanistan in the late 1970s in an effort to preserve their nomadic way of life. But it hasn't quite worked out that way. Instead, they've traded in their customary felt yurts for apartments in two-story structures made out of concrete blocks.